


Pinchy! Pinchy!

by Gloomier



Series: Tea's Fic Funbox [4]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Octopus Bilbo Baggins, bilboctopus, dwarves are crabs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 01:04:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11840763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloomier/pseuds/Gloomier
Summary: Bilbo is determined to figure out just what those invading dwarfcrabs are about, so he does a bit of burgling.(or: the sort of mini part 2 toDeep Blue Sea)





	Pinchy! Pinchy!

**Author's Note:**

> A ficlet I wrote based on [Moosefrog's amazing Bilboctopus comic](https://moosefrog.tumblr.com/post/164155215033/pinchy-pinchy-tea-blitz-requested-bilboctopus)!
> 
> So, after 5 minutes of research I know that crabs molt, only I'm not familiar with the fragility of the molted shell. With that said, just go with the flow. :D
> 
> I'm not thrilled with how I ended this ficlet, but I wanted it to be short-ish so I had to do something. It is what it is I guess. I am happy with all the rest of it though!
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://tea-blitz.tumblr.com/)

They’re not gone and Bilbo has lost count of how long they’ve been camping right outside his home.

He’s taken to covering the entrance to his grotto with a boulder, something he hasn’t had to do since Lobelia moved to the other side of the reef with Otho after they married. The thought of that woman invading his cave again makes Bilbo shudder and his tentacles curl. The dwarves - and they were dwarves, Bilbo had overheard them speaking one afternoon while he was spying on them - were a raucous bunch, and Bilbo didn’t trust them to not make themselves at home in _his_ home if he left it exposed.

It seems like a pointless effort when those bulky jerks looked like they could easily toss aside the boulder like a pebble.

But he moves it anyway.

Bilbo has, unfortunately, conceded to the fact that these dwarfcrabs were here to stay, and no amount of aggressive shrieking by him was going to change that fact. And if these loud buffoons were going to make their home from part of his home, then it’s only right that Bilbo is allowed to go through their things and see what they’re all about. Yes. It's a perfectly respectable trade off.

He nods his stubborn affirmation that this is in fact a perfectly okay thing to do; equal exchange and what have you.

Bilbo’s camouflage fluidly adjusts to his surroundings as he glides stealthily through the kelp, along the edges of the dwarfcrab camp. The evenings he’s spent observing the dwarves at a distance Bilbo has noticed that they often leave one or two people on watch which is, if you asked him, utterly ridiculous when the Reef is a very safe place. Hobbits are very sneaky creatures but Bilbo wasn’t willing to push his luck, so he opted to do his investigation during the waking hours. More like: he overheard that loud mouth, Kili, talking about how they were all going to the market today. That left him the perfect opportunity to… _well,_ take after Lobelia - only minus the thieving of shiny, pretty objects.

Bilbo peers carefully out from behind the curtain of kelp to make sure that the area is void of dwarves. No signs of any dwarves, but the clearing is messy, to say the least.

Some of the kelp from the other side of the forest has been ripped from the sand for who knows what purpose, all sorts of strange things were strewn about, and there were deep burrows in the sand next to the mounds that had been dug out of them. _Very strange creatures indeed,_ Bilbo thinks.

Something poking out from one of the burrows catches Bilbo’s eye. He takes one more look around before slipping out from the safety of his hiding place. He expects for someone to pop out someplace and yell _gotcha,_ but it never happens - even now as Bilbo looms over the hole. What he finds inside is not at all what he had been expecting, but it presents him with a rare opportunity.

Bilbo doesn’t hesitate in his decision and begins to drag the thing up and out of the hole. The strange object is lighter than its size made it seem, but it’s also nearly as thick as his middle and half the length of him. Most important of all, it sticks out like a sore tentacle with its coloring of red and blue. Once it’s out of the sand pit he gets a better hold of it and propels himself back into the kelp, not bothering to camouflage given that he’s carrying a brightly colored crab-claw in his arms now.

He darts behind a massive rock, one of the bigger ones just outside the entrance to his cave, taking one last look around before he moves on push the boulder guarding his home. Bilbo sets aside the claw and struggles a bit to push the boulder out of the way, only managing to unblock half the entrance. _Good enough_ Bilbo thinks as he scoops his prize back into his arms, then squeezes easily into his grotto.

Now nestled within the safety of his home Bilbo holds the claw up to look at it, turning it this way and that. The outside of it feels weird: smooth and then bumpy in places, while the pinchy parts of it are more notched (perfect for cracking shells). He angles the claw downward, towards himself, to look at the end of it (where a dwarf would normally be attached) and frowns expecting there is be something in there, remnants of a dwarf maybe; Bilbo hopes that none of the dwarves had gotten their claw ripped off. The thought makes Bilbo shudder and recall the time when he was little and lost one of his tentacles; his mother had told him repeatedly _not_ to mess with the giant clam. Thankfully it regrew, but he was taught that not all creatures were able to regrow their parts like hobbits could, and that he was lucky he could.

To Bilbo’s great relief, the inside of the claw is empty.

He reaches one of his arms in all the way up to his shoulder, tilting backward in the effort as his fins paddle to keep him from lurching further back, while his other arm keeps the claw steady.

“Ha ha!” Bilbo begins to giggle. “Look at me, I’m a crab!”

It takes a little work but Bilbo manages to work the claw open and close, allowing him to carelessly pinch at the water.

“Pinchy, pinchy! Hahaha-OW!!”

As quick as the fun had come it vanished, leaving only a throbbing pain in one of his tentacles.

Like an idiot he had pinched _himself._

“Oh, blast! That hurts!” Bilbo whines and hastily shoves the claw off his arm, leaving it to fall to the sandy floor. “I pinched my own tentacle!”

Of all the things he could have done, pinching himself was not on his list; it was bad enough the dwarves pinched him (though not at all as hard as he had pinched himself). He’s tempted to toss the stupid claw right back outside after that. The thought that prevents him from doing just that is the inevitability that he’d be caught red handed, with someone else’s property, like he had caught Lobelia so many times in the past. He was not willing to risk such a damaging hit to his respectability.

Bilbo picks up the stupid claw back up and gently paddles himself further into his grotto, trying his best not to use his bruised tentacle too much in the process. Bilbo considers placing the claw in the main chamber of his home; he passes through it instead, wishing to avoid questioning from potential hobbit visitors, especially with how gossipy hobbits were. He enters a smaller chamber where he keeps all the things he’s collected himself through the years. The entire space is covered, ceiling to sandy floor, in all sorts of objects in varying sizes, shiny to tarnished, but Bilbo manages to find a space big enough on top of a box Prim’s son calls a treasure box.

He places the claw carefully on the box and leaves the room without a second thought.


End file.
